Ugeb Assignment 1

UGEB1307 Energy and Green Society

Term 2, 2014 – 2015

Assignment 1

Part 1

1. The Earth’s climate system refers to the long term pattern in atmospheric condition like average temperature. The climate system will be affected by three natural factors including solar radiation, ocean, and atmosphere as well as emission of CO2 by human activities.

Sun emits more solar radiation to Earth when they get closer causing the Earth to have a higher average surface temperature and vice versa. Water in Ocean surface absorbs radiation from sun and heats up while water underneath is cooler. Wind blowing from different direction caused ocean current to exist that transport cool water or warm water to different region causing the temperature to change.

When solar radiation reaches Earth, some would be absorbs by atmosphere and some would be reflected by atmosphere, others pass through to Earth surface. There are more and more CO2 emission caused by human activities like burning of fossil fuel, cutting down trees and so on. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that will reflect more solar radiation back to Earth after they came in which leads to an increase in average temperature. This is called greenhouse effect.

2. One major consequence of global warming is sea-level rise. Since more and more ice in polar area are melting and volume of water in ocean in expanding due to increase in temperature of ocean, sea-level is rising.

Rise in sea-level will cause beach erosion, flooding around coastal area, penetration of saltwater to aquifers. Also, rise in sea-level would cause high tides which leads to formation of storms in ocean.

Flooding around coastal area caused people lived around that area to migrate to other places. In some extreme case, all citizens in Iceland have to find a new place to live as scientists predicts that their country will sink into ocean due to rise of sea-level.

Since storm surge would be caused by rise in sea-level, people live in storm area have...